Antec ISK600 Mini-ITX Case Review

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Antec ISK600 Mini-ITX Case Exterior

The Antec ISK600 has very basic outer design, with the only decorations being the small Antec logo and the led strip. The strip gives off a very muted blue light and is a good choice for builders who don’t want a case with an overstated decoration. The panel is plastic, and features your standard assortment of power and reset buttons, USB ports (one 2.0 and 3.0 each) and audio ports. The switches had a nice, firm feel to them and will likely stand up to repeated use quite nicely. The front panel does not appear to be removable.

The sides and top of the case are made of brushed aluminum. This brushed look is attractive, but the moment I removed the case from it’s bag it started attracting fingerprints and dust, and already had a few scratches that looked like they were incurred during shipping. As the case was packaged safely, it would seem that the brushed surfaces tend to scratch quite easily. The front panel features vents on each side, but all they provide are extra openings to let air (and dust) into the case. The grilles on each side serve as extra ventilation for the graphics card and the power supply but again, don’t feature anything to prevent dust from entering the case.

The rear of the case features the I/O plate slot for the motherboard, dual expansion slots, the power socket, and the sole case fan mount (120mm). You could technically mount this as an intake, but there is nowhere for the air to escape from the case if you do that. To remove the blanks from the expansion slot(s), remove the screw holding the blank in place then slide the blank out.

The bottom of the case features four rubber feet for vibration reduction, another vent along the bottom of the front panel, and what seems to be a second vent along the side, but it doesn’t seem to have any clear function.

Antec chose not to create a flashy, complicated exterior, and instead concentrated on making a simple design that could fit the role of a HTPC or office PC without a large footprint or drawing attention. Even the front LED strip is designed with this is mind, providing a muted glow that is not out of place on a design such as this, or in a work / living environment. The way the aluminum tends to attract noticeable marks and dust is a bummer, but again, this case isn’t meant to be looked at.

1 comment

Dave Ford

“Antec added anti-vibration rubber around the screw heads of the rear 3.5″ HDD trays, but for some reason did not do the same with the 2.5″ / ODD bay.”

…because an SSD doesn’t have any moving parts, thus no vibration. I suppose that it might be nice to have that for the optical drive, but given that it’s a slim optical drive and thus limited in its speed, I don’t see vibration being a problem.